Creating brand awareness through automated email nurturing in campaigns in B2B context

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LAPPEENRANTA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY LUT School of Business and Management

Master’s Degree Programme in International Marketing Management (MIMM)

Master’s thesis

CREATING BRAND AWARENESS THROUGH AUTOMATED EMAIL NURTURING CAMPAIGNS IN B2B CONTEXT

Laura Similä, 2016

1st Supervisor/Examiner: Professor Sanna-Katriina Asikainen 2nd Supervisor/Examiner: Professor Hanna Salojärvi

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ABSTRACT

Author: Similä, Laura Ilona

Title: Creating brand awareness through automated email nurturing in campaigns in b2b context

School: LUT School of Business and Management Programme: International Marketing Management

Year: 2016

Master’s Thesis: Lappeenranta University of Technology 85 pages, 3 figures, 5 tables, 4 pictures and 1 appendices

Examiners: Professor Sanna-Katriina Asikainen Professor Hanna Salojärvi

Keywords: Brand awareness, marketing automation, automated email marketing, B2B, nurturing

The aim of this qualitative study is to find out how marketing automation systems can be used in improving a company's brand recognition in a B2B customer environment. This study will particularly focus on whether or not automated email marketing can improve brand recognition. The frame of reference for this study is based around the research questions and split into theoretical and empirical parts.

The theoretical part introduces brand recognition as well as implementation of marketing automation tools. The empirical part tests and shows actual experiences of the use of marketing automation systems in improving brand recognition.

The results of the study indicate that marketing automation systems only improve brand recognition after customers are already somewhat familiar with the brand. Using marketing automation systems seems to be best suited for boosting sales and improving customer engagement in circumstances where the customer knows the brand and accepts their email marketing.

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TIIVISTELMÄ

Tekijä: Similä, Laura Ilona

Tutkielman otsikko: Bränditunnettuuden kasvattaminen automatisoitujen sähköpostikampanjoiden avulla b2b asiakasympäristössä Tiedekunta: Kauppatieteellinen tiedekunta

Pääaine: International Marketing Management

Vuosi: 2016

Pro-gradu - tutkielma: Lappeenrannan teknillinen yliopisto 85 sivua, 3 kuviota, 4 kuvaa, 5 taulukkoa ja 1 liite

Tarkastajat: Professori Sanna-Katriina Asikainen Professori Hanna Salojärvi

Hakusanat: Bränditunnettuus, markkinoinnin automatisaatio, automatisoitu sähköpostimarkkinointi, B2B

Tämän kvalitatiivisen tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää, miten markkinoinnin automaatiojärjestelmiä voidaan hyödyntää yrityksen bränditunnettuuden kasvattamisessa B2B asiakasympäristössä. Tutkimuksessa keskitytään erityisesti siihen, voiko automatisoitu sähköpostimarkkinointi tehostaa bränditunnettuuden lisäämistä. Tutkimuksen viitekehys on luotu tutkimuskysymysten pohjalta ja tutkimus jaettu teoreettiseen sekä empiiriseen osaan.

Työn teoreettinen osuus käsittelee bränditunnettuutta sekä markkinoinnin automaatioon käytettävien työkalujen käyttöönottoa. Tutkimuksen empiirinen osuus testaa ja tuo ilmi käytännön kokemuksia markkinoinnin automaatiojärjestelmän hyödyntämisestä bränditunnettuuden lisäämisessä.

Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että markkinoinnin automaatiojärjestelmät voivat tehostaa bränditunnettavuutta vasta, kun asiakas tuntee brändin jo kevyesti entuudestaan.

Markkinoinnin automaatiojärjestelmien hyödyntäminen sopii mahdollisesti parhaiten tehostamaan myyntiä ja asiakaskokemusta tilanteessa, jossa asiakas tuntee brändin ja hyväksyy heidän sähköpostimarkkinointinsa.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Great things in business are never done by one person.

They're done by a team of great people.

I want to thank LUT School of Business and Management, my fellow MIMM –students and professor Sanna-Katriina Asikainen for pushing me forward and counseling me on my studies. It was a pleasure to be part of this truly international learning environment.

It was five unforgettable years full of great memories and great friends. I want to thank every single one who has been a part of this journey, but especially the 8ball crew and Board of Enklaavi 2012.

Still, I would not be here without my family. Your support was invaluable.

17.10.2016 in Helsinki, Laura Similä

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Internal interviewees of the case company Majoituspalvelu Forenom Oy.

Table 2. Data collection from the marketing specialists.

Table 3. Opening percentages of the automated email marketing messages (first, second and third letters).

Table 4. Relation between opening percentage and amount of sent letters.

Table 5. Percentage of recipients that blocked the content during the automated email marketing campaign.

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Theoretical Framework of the Research.

Figure 2. Roles of the buying center roles (Kotler & Pfoertsch 2006, 25).

Figure 3. Brand influence on buying decision (Modified from Kotler & Pfoertsch 2006, 25).

LIST OF PICTURES

Picture 1. Internal interviewees of the case company Majoituspalvelu Forenom Oy.

Picture 2. Data collection from the marketing specialists.

Picture 3. Opening percentages of the automated email marketing messages (first, second and third letters).

Picture 4. Relation between opening percentage and amount of sent letters.

Picture 5. Percentage of recipients that blocked the content during the automated email marketing campaign.

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1 INTRODUCTION

This master’s thesis aims to understand and learn if marketing automation tools could be utilized for creating brand awareness in business to business environments. More specifically, this thesis focuses on the automated email nurturing process and automated email marketing processes that could make brand awareness building more efficient. This thesis includes theory about brand awareness as well as academic research on the use of marketing automation tools. It is clear that a marketing automation tool itself could not create brand awareness for the company but could it, as a tool, intensify the results? This thesis includes an empirical part that consists of interviews, observations and a small case study.

This study is conducted as a case study research based on a Finnish SME. This chapter will provide an introduction to the topic, background of the study, literature review, research problems, theoretical framework and the definitions of the key concepts. Also, the delimitations, research methodology and the structure of the thesis are presented at the end of this chapter.

1.1 Background of the research

Ongoing online conversation shows that plenty of marketers are infatuated about marketing automation, but only few actually know how it should be done. According to Sweezey (2014), many people in the marketing field actually tried to work with marketing automation, but do not have full understanding of how to do it correctly. The growth of digital marketing and increase of customer-centric marketing drives demand for personalized marketing automation solutions (DeBevois 2007) that could bring sales and marketing systems together effectively. The rapid growth of digital development allows increasingly better automation solutions (Klie 2014), and increased demand for process efficiency improvement calls for more efficient marketing (Ernst et al. 2010; Callah 2010; DeBevois 2007).

Marketing automation software systems are now more desirable than ever (Klie 2015;

2014). According to Klie (2015), latest reports released by Frost and Sullivan expect marketing automation sales to reach over 14 billion dollars by 2020. Marketers operate under the pressure of optimizing the returns of marketing investments, and the importance of marketing automation increases specifically (Klie 2014) represent huge growth rates year-over-year (Klie 2015).

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Adamson et al. (2012) proved that customers use online information sources during the purchasing process and before even contacting a seller. The fact that B2B buyers also search information online to support their decision making process creates need for a new marketing paradigm; ‘digital content marketing’ (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015). Digital content marketing refers to creating, distributing and sharing relevant, compelling and timely content to engage customers at a significant stage of their purchasing process in order to encourage the decision to buy (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015; Holliman and Rowley 2014).

According to Holliman and Rowley (2014), Pulizzi and Handley (2014) and Järvinen and Taiminen (2015), the key business objectives of B2B content marketing are creating brand awareness and engagement, increasing sales and lead generation, upselling and cross- selling. According to Sweezey (2014) content marketing could be described as a hot topic especially in the B2B marketing sector. Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) believe that the digital environment has popularized the term of content marketing. Unfortunately, academic research on digital content marketing as well as about marketing automation is still very insufficient. This study demonstrates how automated email marketing could be utilized when creating brand awareness among B2B customers. Since a shift to digital content marketing (e.g. behavioral targeting and content personalization) is one of the basic requirements when building marketing automation (Ernst et al. 2010; Callah 2010), this study will demonstrate how digital content marketing relates to marketing automation.

Automated email marketing also gives great possibility to test both marketing automation and content marketing since email marketing could be used for multiple marketing purposes. Email marketing could be used, for example, as a part of inbound marketing, promoting and advertising, event-marketing and overall brand awareness creation.

Automated email marketing requires an IT tool that has an automation feature. Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) refer to marketing automation as an IT tool that brings together sales and marketing systems and enables companies to utilize customer data from their CRM systems. At the moment, all forms of marketing automation are attracting increasing attention (Ernst et al. 2010; Callah 2010), also in the B2B sector (Hubsot 2015; Järvinen and Taiminen 2015; Advertising Age 2014). However, Hubspot (2015) still states that many marketing automation investments fail. Previous literature explains the basic idea and requirements of marketing automation, but very little is known about how marketing automation processes should be applied in order to create brand awareness.

Since marketing automation is quickly becoming a significant part of a company's marketing strategy, it is strange that it still remains academically un-researched. Putkinen (2014)

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claims that marketing automation as a technology and a tool does not clearly fall under any traditional research areas due to its cross-departmental nature. As a tool, marketing automation is part of both the selling process and the marketing process. According to him, the subject falls into an academic ‘’no-man’s land’’ between marketing, management and information systems. Putkinen (2015) also admits that marketing automation technologies and tools are still quite new in many business areas, especially in Finland.

1.2 Research problem and the objectives of the research

The aim of this study is to find out how automated email marketing could be used when creating brand awareness among the B2B customers. The scientific goal of the study is to add knowledge about marketing automation, especially from a marketing perspective and more specifically from an automated email marketing perspective. Since previous research on marketing automation focuses more on sales funnels and sales, this study will focus on describing how to create brand awareness through marketing automation tools like automated email marketing. The managerial goal of the research is to help the case company build an automated email marketing process that creates brand awareness as well as overall customer engagement for them. More specifically this study will focus on the first steps of the customer funnel, e.g. creating brand awareness among the company’s B2B customers. The main research question of the study could be defined as:

How can automated email marketing be utilized to create brand awareness among B2B customers?

In order to reach these goals, the author will answer three sub-questions. These three sub- questions are formulated as follows:

1. How do marketing automation tools help create brand awareness?

2. How to create brand awareness among B2B customers?

3. How to create automated email marketing process that supports brand awareness building?

1.3 Literature review

The literature of this thesis is divided into two parts: previous literature about marketing automation tools and brand awareness. According to Heimbach et al. (2015) the first

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definition of marketing automation was made in 2001 by John D.C. Little and it referred to the automated marketing decision support on the Internet. Already at that time automated marketing promised higher returns on marketing investments and increased customer engagement through personalization of marketing activities (Bucklin et al. 1998). Today, marketing automation could be seen as a tool for understanding and utilizing customers’

digital body language and purchasing behavior (Klie 2014). Previous literature also shows that personalization is still one of the key elements of successful marketing automation (Heimbach et al. 2015). Marketing automation platforms enable marketers to easily segment and deliver targeted content to a diverse customer base. It also seems that marketing automation is traditionally used mostly in B2B organizations (Klie 2014).

Existing knowledge about marketing automation is quite lacking and mostly based on informal online articles or research reports produced by commercial research institutions (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015). The academic research of the subject has attracted limited attention, probably due to the recent nature of the subject. Even though marketing automation could be listed as one of the hottest terms in B2B marketing, only a few B2B companies are using it (Advertising Age 2014).

Lately Heimbach et al. (2015) explained the previous history of marketing automation and also provided a general framework for marketing automation. In their study, Heimbach et al. (2015) also highlighted the importance of personalized marketing and utilizing CRM systems when using marketing automation. However, this study uses a definition by Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) that sees marketing automation as an IT tool that brings together sales and marketing systems and enables companies to utilize customer data from their CRM systems. It is important to note that automated email marketing is usually one part of these integrated marketing automation tools. Since this study examines how automated email marketing could be utilized to create brand awareness, the theory of marketing automation will focus more on the automated email marketing feature of marketing automation technology.

Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) examined how marketing automation could achieve business benefits when integrating content marketing with the B2B selling processes. The study proved that demand for the digital content that leads potential buyers to interact with the companies is growing. They also stated that digital content marketing is strongly connected with building an effective marketing automation process. The lack of academic research challenged previous studies of marketing automation, and Järvinen and Taiminen (2015)

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also stated that even the overall relationship between digital marketing and B2B sales has attracted very limited attention in existing literature.

Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) proved that the previous academic research on the subject is very limited but necessary. According to their study it could be beneficial to examine how marketing automation mechanisms can be used to create and share content for the key objectives of content marketing. Those key objectives could be for example promoting brand awareness or engagement. Moreover, Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) focused tightly on sales oriented views of marketing automation, but this study will be more from a marketing perspective.

When talking about branding or brand equity, it should be understood that a brand is different from a product. Products are more likely to perform functions whereas brands offer emotions. Products could be very similar to each other but brands and branding is what differentiates different products. (Joseph 2015) According to Keller (2008) a brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design that is meant to identify and differentiate the brand’s products or services from their competitors. However, a brand can be built to customers’

preferences and that is how customers are able to remember and recognize information regarding a certain brand. (Keller 2008) Keller (1998, 70) describes a positive brand image as a strong, favorable and unique link that is created by marketers to associate the brand in memory. However, previous literature proves that research about brand awareness usually goes hand in hand with brand image research.

Customers gather information about brands and their products or services all the time from the outside world. (Keller 2008) That leads us to brand awareness. How to build a brand that is recognizable? How to create brand awareness and make sure that customers will recall your brand? According to existing literature like Keller (1998) and Aaker (1991), brand awareness is one source of brand equity. Keller (1998) and Aaker (1991) wrote about awareness as one key part of managing brand equity. Among other things, previous literature like Keller (1998, 67) investigated what causes brand equity to exist or how brand equity like brand awareness could be created. Aaker (1991, 13) states that brand equity means a ‘’set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand’’. Those could be for example its name, brand image or symbol like a logo. In 1991 Aaker (17) stated that brand equity consists of brand loyalty, name awareness, perceived quality, brand associations and

‘’other proprietary brand assets’’. However, those definitions have changed over time and already in 1998 Keller (46) wrote about brand awareness, not name awareness.

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Other than the concept of marketing automation, branding as well as brand awareness theory has attracted a lot of academic interest. However, the ways of creating and understanding brand awareness have changed during academic history (Landa 2005).

According to Keller (1993), brand awareness is also an element of brand knowledge.

Gustafson and Chabot (2007) state that brand awareness is mostly connected to the consumer’s memory. Established research like Keller (1998) and Aaker (1991) sees that brand awareness is one part of brand equity and includes two features; brand recognition and brand recall. In 2008 Keller stated ‘’top of mind’’ as a third part of brand awareness.

Nowadays academic literature broadly includes all three aspects to brand awareness; brand recognition, brand recall and top of mind.

This study examines how branding, and more specifically brand awareness, could be related to B2B digital marketing through marketing automation. Kotler & Pfoertsch (2006) investigated how B2B branding should be done and why it is important. According to them, brand management is always more important for companies in almost every industry.

However, they also stated that the importance of branding and brand equity is oftentimes misunderstood in B2B marketing field.

1.4 Theoretical framework

The theoretical framework describes the theoretical perspectives of the study. This framework presents topic key concepts and the theoretical starting points of the research.

The topic key concepts of this study are brand awareness and marketing automation technology. Since this study is implemented in B2B environment, it will be noticed in theoretical framework. More specifically theoretical framework show how brand awareness could be created in different stages of automated email marketing process. The ultimate outcome will show how marketing automation tools, more specifically automated email marketing, could be utilized when creating brand awareness for the case company. Figure 1 illustrates the theoretical framework of the study.

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Figure 1: Theoretical Framework of the Research

1.5 Delimitations

This study only covers medium to small sized Finnish companies that are using marketing automation tools for their B2B marketing. This study does not editorialize consumer customers. When talking about B2B marketing, we need to pay attention that sometimes B2B customers are in buyer's role but not the actual final user of the product of service.

Haig (2001) states that sometimes B2B marketers forget that the purpose of the marketing is not only to raise brand awareness or get short-term success. But even though the author admits that building long-term loyalty and engagement is one of the ultimate goals for B2B marketing, this study does not focus on long term brand engagement. This study focuses on the first steps of the customer sales funnel like creating brand awareness for the company.

One of the managerial needs for this research was to build a marketing automation process that creates overall customer engagement for the case company. In order to create Digital B2B marketing

MARKETING AUTOMATION

BRAND AWARENESS

Personalization Differentation Brand recall

Brand recognition Top of mind

Building brand awareness

Building marketing automation

process

Unaware of brand

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engagement, customers first need to recognize, be interested and maybe even decide to buy that certain product or service. For that reason, this study will focus on the first steps of the customers’ path, e.g. creating brand awareness about the company among the company’s B2B customers. This study covers the marketing automation process from the beginning of the process, when the company contacts a potential buyer. This study does not cover customer engagement that happens or does not happen after the customer actually uses the service many times. This study focuses on the digital marketing process that leads B2B buyers to buying decisions through the marketing automation tools.

Since the empirical part of this study focuses on automated digital email marketing through marketing automation, social media usage will not be covered completely. The main reason for this is that measuring for example Facebook’s efficiency or power for B2B marketing could be difficult and multidimensional. The aim of this study is to learn how brand awareness could be created through marketing automation mechanisms. In order to reach this goal, brand awareness should be measured. This study also focuses on the automated email marketing feature of the marketing automation tools. As such, other features of the marketing automation tools will not be elaborated on completely.

However, social media channels like LinkedIn could be suitable for B2B marketers as well.

Sweezey (2014, 186) states that social media channels should be used for distributing content even though those channels do not create any content. Marketing automation could be utilized with social media, but this study only focuses on specific ways that combine social media channels and automated digital email marketing.

1.6 Definitions of the key concepts

This section defines the key concepts of the study. Most of the concept definitions are based on the existing academic literature that was introduced in the theoretical part of the study.

Brand awareness

Brand awareness includes three parts; brand recognition, brand recall and top of mind.

Basically brand awareness means the familiarity of the brand through repeated impressions. The idea is that the more customers experience the brand in every way possible, the more likely the customers will remember and recognize the brand in the future.

(Keller 2008) According to Keller (1993, 12) the third and most advanced part of brand

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awareness, ‘’top of mind’’ is when a customer strongly associates the brand with the product category in their memory.

Marketing automation

Previous literature proved that there are various definitions for marketing automation. This study uses the definition provided by Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) and it sees marketing automation as an IT tool that brings together sales and marketing systems and enables companies to utilize customer data from their CRM systems. Marketing automation is implemented through marketing automation software (MAS) that includes different kind of software platforms that are created and designed to automate marketing tasks. Examples of the most popular Marketing automation software worldwide could be listed as Hubspot, Marketo and Pardot (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015). The empirical part of this study will be executed with Microsoft Dynamics Marketing (MDM) software and more specifically it will focus on the email marketing automation tool. The bottom line is, marketing automation creates cross-channeled and fully tracked digital marketing that could be created from one single platform instead of different tools and channels (Sweezey 2014).

Automated email marketing

According to Haig (2001) email marketing is one way to create brand awareness among potential B2B customers. Email marketing enables companies to share and offer informative content about their products and services digitally via email. Email marketing is executed with email software that can send out electronic commercials (Jenkins 2009).

Automated email marketing tools are usually part of the marketing automation software. It enables brands to create and deliver multiple email marketing messages at the same time.

It saves time and resources, but the biggest benefit of the automation systems in email marketing is that marketers are able to measure and react to the results during the marketing process. For example, the automated email marketing process reacts automatically to the receiver’s behavior and changes the content based on the receiver’s digital behavior. This enables marketers to send more personal marketing messages to customers, since the messages are based on the customer’s own behavior and needs.

(Sweezey 2014 and Putkinen 2014)

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Digital content marketing

Content marketing in a digital environment refers to creating, distributing and sharing relevant, compelling and timely content to engage customers at a significant stage of their purchasing process in order to encourage their to decision to buy (Holliman and Rowley 2014). Effective use of marketing automation requires use of digital content marketing (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015).

B2B buying behavior

Business-to-Business refers to business that is conducted between companies, not between company and consumers. Because of the digitalism, B2B buying is no longer dependant on the traditional ways of selling and marketing. Online marketplaces allow a wider spectrum of buyers, lower prices and make purchases quicker and more convenient to B2B buyers. (Haig 2001)

Personalization

According to Keller (2003, 230) companies could use personalized marketing to increase customer's desire to buy a certain brand. He states that marketers could use personalization through experiential marketing, one-to-one marketing and permission marketing.

1.7 Research methodology

This research will include both a theoretical and an empirical part. The theoretical part of the thesis is based on a review of the existing literature on brand awareness and use of marketing automation tools. However, as a tool, marketing automation is more likely the context of the thesis and not the actual part of the theory. Brand awareness theory is extensively studied from numerous decades and it is generally accepted to consist of brand recognition, brand recall and top of mind awareness. Academic research about the use of marketing automation systems is still quite minor and most of the literature is acquired from the last few years. This is why the author will also use secondary sources like articles as references.

Because of the nature of the research questions and theoretical framework, a qualitative research method is used. Qualitative research aims to understand and analyze words rather

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than numbers (Patton, Cochran 2002). In a qualitative research, various research methods could be used, for example interviews, observation and the usage of the literature (Metsämuuronen 2005, 198; 222). As a bottom line, Gibbs (2007, 94) sees that qualitative research attempts to understand, describe and explain. However, since this study also aims to answer questions ‘’how’’ and ‘’what’’, the case study approach is chosen. According to Robson (1993, 44) the case study approach has a considerable ability to provide answers to the questions “how” and “what”. This study also examines research questions by searching existing use of the marketing automation tools from the case company. Since this study also examines the case company’s practices for marketing automation use, this study utilizes a single-case research method. Single-case research methods focus on one single case and data acquisition methods could be for example surveys, interviews, observation and use of existing archive materials. (Järvinen & Järvinen 2004, 75) The aim of the case study part is to find out how marketing automation tools could help create brand awareness in practice.

The empirical part of the thesis is based on qualitative research. In this part, the author has interviewed several marketing automation specialists as well as case company representatives to understand the topic and answer the research questions. Altogether five interviewees from different Finnish SMEs were interviewed, four individuals from the case company Majoituspalvelu Forenom Oy and one marketing specialist from Zeeland Family Oy. The author also cited speeches and lessons about marketing automation usage implemented by marketing specialist. Interviews of this research were implemented in person using semi-structured interviews. All the qualitative data was collected with interviews and sightings that were executed during February and April in 2016. All the companies and individuals were selected because each of them were working with marketing automation software decisions, either inside of the company or as a consultant for the existing Finnish companies.

1.8 Structure of the research

This section presents the structure of the thesis. This thesis includes seven chapters and it is divided into theoretical and empirical parts.

The first chapter introduces the topic and gives introduction to the thesis. The first chapter includes background of the subject and the chosen topics. The author also clarifies why the topic is chosen and why it is important to research this particular topic. After that, the

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research questions were presented and explained. The author also presents and defines the key concepts of the study and shows which limitations should be made conducting this thesis. Naturally the first chapter also includes the theoretical framework, research methodology and finally the structure of the research.

The second and third chapters of the study formulate the theoretical part of the study. The second chapter introduces brand awareness theory and it includes knowledge and theory to create and achieve brand awareness. The awareness pyramid as well as the value of brand awareness is opened. The second chapter of the thesis also includes aspects from the B2B and digital context of the study. Those chapters present how brand awareness building could be related to digital buying or B2B buying.

The third chapter of the thesis includes knowledge about marketing automation and its use.

Most of the used articles are academic quality, but the chapter also includes articles and blogs about the topic. However, even though the research may be academic it could not be described as a theory. The third chapter introduces marketing automation and automated email marketing usage in a very detailed and concrete manner. It explains and opens the overall marketing automation process and then focuses on its automated email marketing feature. Finally, the chapter also opens the relation between marketing automation and digital content marketing in B2B context.

The fourth and fifth chapter contain the empirical part of this thesis. The fourth chapter introduces research and data collection methods. That section opens up how the needed data was gathered and why. The fourth chapter also introduces the case company Majoituspalvelu Forenom Oy and explains why the company and all the representatives were chosen for this thesis. In the end of the fourth chapter, the reliability and validity of the research will be discussed and analyzed.

The fifth chapter includes empirical analysis and the results of the research. The fifth chapter opens up results from the interviews, as well as observations from the small and practical case study. This chapter also introduces aspects from the marketing specialists and insights from the case company representatives.

The sixth chapter is the last actual chapter of this thesis and it includes conclusions and discussion. In this chapter, all the research questions are answered and the results of the study presented. The author compares and combines together the theoretical and empirical

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part of the study. The final chapter of the thesis includes a summary of the findings and an analysis of the theoretical contribution of the study. In this final chapter the author also provides managerial notifications and recommendations for future research. Thus, the limitations of the research will be analyzed.

At the end of this thesis, chapter seven will present references of this thesis.

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2 CREATING AND ACHIEVING BRAND AWARENESS

Previous literature shows that if a potential buyer knows a brand, the possibility to decide to buy is higher. Customers are more willing to buy a product or service that they know (Oliver 1980). Gustafson and Chabot (2007) state that a significant brand image means that the customers recognize the brand easily. According to them, brand image could be created for example by offering information, like showing the features of the product to the customers. There is actually a certain process to create brand awareness. According to Nathan (2011) the first phase is when a customer perceives that he or she needs the product or service. After understanding the need, the customer seeks the information and compares different kinds of solutions and brands. The customer evaluates the product or service both financially and personally, and if he or she decides to buy it, the customer reviews the product or service after a purchase.

According to Merisavo et al. (2006, 36) customer relationships could strengthen if the customer feels that he or she can get help with finding information, can ask questions about a service or product and is able to debate and give feedback. That is to say, the customer needs to feel that he or she is noticed and important. However, customers will not be satisfied with just information. According to Merisavo et al. (2006, 36) customers appreciate information that helps them with decision-making like personalized recommendations or differentiated search systems.

2.1 Brand awareness

According to Aaker (1996, 61) brand awareness reflects the possibility that customers recognize and recall a brand in multiple situations. The idea is that customers know where and how to get access to the brand’s product or service (Malik et al. 2013, 168). As said earlier, established literature like Tuominen (1999) and Keller (2008) states that brand awareness consists of brand recognition, brand recall and top of mind. According to them, brand recognition reflects the ability of a customer to confirm prior exposure to the brand.

Brand recall instead reflects to ‘’customer’s ability to retrieve the brand when the product category is already given and the needs fulfilled by the category’’ (Keller 1993, 3) or

‘’customers’ ability to correctly generate the brand from a memory” (Keller 1993, 12). Top of mind is when a customer strongly associates the brand with the product category in memory (Aaker 1991, 62).

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More in-detail brand recognition refers to customers’ ‘’ability to confirm prior exposure to the brand when given the brand as a cue’’ (Keller 1998, 67). It basically means that a customer is able to recognize if she or he has heard or seen the brand before. If a customer walks into shop, can she or he correctly distinguish the familiar brand? Since brand recognition is based on seeing or hearing something that is related to brand, it is more important than brand recall when shopping inside of the store. While products could be physically present, potential customers might recognize the familiar product easier than recall it from memory.

(Keller 1998, 68)

According to Keller (1998, 67) the second part of brand awareness, brand recall, refers to customers’ ‘’ability to retrieve the brand from memory when given the product category, the needs fulfilled by category, or purchase or usage situation as a cue’’. And more simply

‘’brand recall request customer to correctly generate the brand from memory when given a relevant cue’’ (Keller 1998, 68). The difference between recognizing and recalling the brand is that usually it is easier to recognize a brand but not necessarily recall it. The idea of the recall is not just recognizing the brand, but remember it when thinking about the context or for example the product category. Brand recall is significant especially for the services, since potential customers cannot see the service, but they need to recall it. (Keller 1998, 68)

Picture 1 perform Aaker’s (1991, 62) brand awareness pyramid that consists of three different levels. The first and lowest level is brand recognition, which is the minimal level of brand awareness. It is generally said that brand recognition is significant when a potential customer chooses the brand in the purchasing moment, not before. The second level of brand awareness is brand recall that has a stronger brand position than brand recognition.

The last one ‘’Top of Mind’’ is a special position and also the highest level or brand awareness. It means that a specific brand is above and ahead of other brand options in the customer’s mind. ‘’Top of mind -awareness’’ means that the brand is ‘’the first named brand’’

in an unaided recall test. (Aaker 1991, 62)

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Picture 1. The Awareness Pyramid (Aaker 1991, 63).

2.1.1 Significance of brand awareness

Brand awareness could be divided into three levels and the ultimate goal is to be the first- named brand with top of mind awareness in your customer's mind. But how does brand awareness actually work to help the brand’s success? Aaker (1991, 63) states that a dominant brand image creates a strong competitive advantage. According to him, a strong brand helps the brand to be chosen while no other brand will even be considered.

Keller (1998, 68) states that brand awareness is important for three specific reasons;

learning advantages, consideration advantages and choice advantages. Aaker (1991, 63) instead sees that brand awareness increases value in at least four ways. Picture 2 shows, that the value of brand awareness creates value in four different ways;

1. Anchor to which other associations can be attached 2. Familiarity and liking

3. Signal of substance or commitment 4. Brand to be considered

Top of Mind

Brand recall

Brand recognition

Unaware of brand

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Anchor to which other associations can be attached

BRAND AWARENESS Familiarity  Liking

Signal of substance/Commitment Brand to be considered

Picture 2. The value of brand awareness (Aaker 1991, 63)

‘’Anchor to which other associations can be attached’’ refers to using an anchor as a metaphor. The idea is that the associations (like feelings or adjectives) are linked to the brand’s name via chains that link associations in memory. Those links between associations and the brand could be thick, sturdy or even weak. However, those chains could be strengthened with creating stronger brand awareness. (Aaker 1991, 64)

When it comes to a brand being familiar, people usually like familiar things. According to Aaker (1991, 64) brand recognition gives the brand a feeling of familiarity that could guide customers to buy. Keller (1998, 67) as well as Aaker (1991,64) stated that especially with

‘’low-involvement products’’ like paper towels or soap, familiarity could help customer’s buying decisions a lot. If a customer is not interested in comparing products with each other, the familiarity of the product’s name or layout could be enough. Aaker (1991, 65) proved that the recognition value contributes to a brand’s success and there is a positive relationship between liking and amount of exposure. He stated that previous recognition studies (Zajonic 1980) proved that ‘’exposure repetition can affect liking even when the recognition level apparently is unaffected’’.

The next value of brand awareness could be a signal of substance or commitment.

According to Aaker (1991, 65) name awareness is a possibility to gain presence, commitment and substance. According to him, those features could help even B2B buyers’

decision making. Aaker (1991, 65) sees four logical reasons why name awareness or recognition could help buyer’s decision making;

1. If the name is recognized, the firm has advertised extensively.

2. If the name is recognized, the firm has been in the business for a long time.

3. If the name is recognized, the firm is widely distributed.

4. If the name is recognized, the brand is successful and other people use it as well.

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Even though those reasons are not necessarily even true or based on facts, brand awareness could lead potential buyers to feel familiar and trusting about a brand. In contrast to this, if the brand is totally unknown, customers could feel suspicions about it. (Aaker 1991, 65) Aaker (1991, 67) also mentioned that brand awareness creates value in ways that makes a brand be considered. According to him, a brand could not be included in the

‘’consideration set’’ if the buyer could not recall the brand. Generally, brand awareness is request for being considered as an option. However, it must be noted that buyers will also recall brands that they dislike. Another point of view is highly sales-oriented business, which could quickly increase brand awareness with sales meetings.

Aaker (1991, 69) reminders, that brand awareness also has its limitations. Even though brand awareness is an important brand asset, it does not create sales by itself. According to him, this challenge is present especially with new products, because customers are not familiar with the new products even though the brand would be well-known.

2.1.2 Building brand awareness

Aaker (1991, 72) thinks that creating brand awareness requires gaining a brand name identity and linking it to the product class. Especially new brands need to start achieving both recognition and recall from the bottom. Even when the brand is well-know, brand awareness needs to be maintained and improved. Natural building of brand awareness depends a lot on context, industry, company etc. but some guidelines could be set. Building brand awareness is mostly based on psychology and advertising studies.

In 1991 Aaker (72-76) suggested companies to focus on the following ideas;

1. Be different and memorable 2. Involve a slogan or jingle 3. Create symbol exposure 4. Create publicity

5. Do event sponsorships 6. Consider brand extensions 7. Use cues

8. Build recall with repetition 9. Use recall bonus

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When creating brand awareness, marketing messages should be memorable and include a reason to be noticed. Many times this happens when the message is unusual and different from others. Too many times different brands in the same product or service category have very similar marketing communication approaches and that makes it harder to ‘’break out of the clutter’’. (Aaker 1991, 72) However, a noticeable message is not enough. Marketing messages should link the brand and the product/service class together. One possibility to differentiate a brand is to create a slogan or jingle that makes people remember the brand more easily. According to Aaker (1991, 73) the link to the slogan should be built stronger than the link to the brand itself. A slogan or jingle could include characteristics that could be visualized and also easily recalled. However, slogans and jingles should be built with strong link to the brand and product class, for example the slogan could have the brands name in it. (Aaker 1991, 72-73)

According to Aaker (1991, 73) since visual images are much easier to recall and learn, they can play a significant role when creating brand awareness. He suggests companies to create symbol that is strongly linked to a brand and its product or service. He also states that publicity could be less expensive and still more effective than advertising. As everybody knows, people are usually more willing to read news than advertising. One effective but also very difficult way to create brand awareness is to create content that leads your company to the news. Aaker (1991, 75) also mentioned that event sponsorship could be one way to create or maintain brand awareness.

Aside from this, Aaker (1991, 75-76) suggests companies to consider brand extensions. In his opinion companies could strengthen brand recall and make their brand more salient by putting brand name on other products. The idea is to add the brand name to other additional products than advertising. Aaker also stated that companies could add ‘’cues’’ to their awareness campaigns to remind customers about their product or service. Brand cues are usually used in packaging solutions and help customers remember or guess what is inside of the box. However, cues and symbols are not enough alone. Aaker also suggested companies to build recall with repetition and use of recall bonus. The idea is that because recall is more difficult than recognition, it requires continuous repetition. (Aaker 1991, 75- 76)

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2.2 Brand awareness in B2B buying

Kotler & Pfoertsch (2006) highlighted that B2B marketing is very different from B2C marketing. They said that the business world has generally seen branding more relevant for consumer markets and products. That is usually based on the fallacy that brand loyalty is a non-rational behavior and does not work with B2B buyers. When buying in the B2B world, the decision-making process should maybe be objective and trust only so-called hard facts like a products’ price, functionality, benefits, features, service or quality. However, Kotler & Pfoertsch (2006) do not believe that even B2B buyers could turn themselves into unemotional or rational machines when buying at work. Kotler & Pfoertsch (2006) also proved that some of the world’s strongest brands do exist in B2B markets and show examples of highly branded B2B companies like Microsoft, IBM, Intel, HP, Oracle and Siemens. They stated that branding is as important and relevant for B2B as it is for B2C.

Also Apunen & Parantainen (2011) states that buyer’s decision making is not based only on rationality but also feelings. They actually argue that the limit of the human’s conscious mind is only 45 bits per second in contrast to the subconscious that is able to handle 11 200 000 bits per second. Aaker (1991, 65) also stated that feelings like familiarity could affect a lot even in large purchasing decisions. According to him, especially situations where brand’s products do not differ, brand awareness could have a strong role in decision making.

According to Haig (2001) differentiation in B2B marketing is just as important as it is for B2C customers. Haig states that branding should be taken just as seriously in B2B business.

B2B buyers make buying decisions for living and many people would think that those decisions should be based only on facts and information. Despite this, Haig (2001) states that honesty is an important part of B2B marketing since buyers’ trust is based on honesty.

He states that digital marketing enables companies to give an unrealistic picture but that it is not profitable in the long run. Kotler & Pfoertsch (2006) emphasize that branding is not about ‘’stirring people into irrational buying decisions’’. They stated that often in the B2B world branding is misunderstood as a way to create an unreal illusion of a product or service.

Kotler & Pfoertsch (2006) told that based on German marketing research, the most important brand functions in B2B are;

1. Increased information efficiency

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2. Risk reduction

3. Value added / Image benefit creation

Kotler & Pfoertsch (2006) sees that industrial or B2B buyer make decisions rationally only up to certain point. According to them, B2B buyers try to make the most rational decisions based on price, features and service. However, they also admit that every B2B buying decision process is very complex and needs to be considered. They see that it is very hard to find out how, why or when a B2B buyer actually makes the decision. Many times different departments inside of the organization have their own opinions that should be taken into account.

The buying process usually starts with selecting a group of brands to consider. That group of for example four different brands could be referred to as a consideration set. How does the buyer decide which brands to choose from the consideration set? The buyer might start thinking of the companies that offer the needed product or service. Naturally the companies that come to mind first have a better opportunity to get inside of the consideration set.

Similarly, companies that are unknown, do not even get the opportunity. It is clear that companies with top of mind awareness have a competitive advantage in situations like this.

(Aaker 1991, 66)

Kotler & Pfoertsch (2006) divides buyers into three types based on their buying situation.

They stated that for almost four decades marketing literature has seen three buying situations as the straight re-buy, modified re-buy and new task. Re-buying is basically buying the same product again from an ‘’approved list’’ that specifies preferred suppliers.

The modified re-buying is a buying situation where ‘’a company aims to satisfy an existing need in a modified way’’ (Kotler & Pfoertsch 2006, 25). In a new task buying situation, a company needs a totally new product or service. Naturally, ‘’new task’’ -situations hold the greatest risk for the company since the service or product is previously unknown. When making a buying decision on a totally new product or service, decision making usually takes more time. That is because more people inside of the buying company are involved in the decision. However, Kotler & Pfoertsch (2006, 25) sees that successful branding could expedite the buying process.

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Figure 2. Roles of the buying center roles (Kotler & Pfoertsch 2006, 25).

When planning marketing, it is also important to understand who actually makes the buying decision and why. Figure 2 shows that marketing literature generally sees that buying decisions are usually made by initiators, users, influencers, deciders, approvers, buyers and gatekeepers. Figure 3 below shows how brand influences on buying decision.

BRAND

Figure 3. Brand influence on buying decision (Modified from Kotler & Pfoertsch 2006, 25).

Buying center Decider

Approver

Buyer

Gatekeeper Initiator

User Influencer

Buying center Hard facts

Interpersonal Invidual

Buying situation

Environmental Organizational

Soft facts

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2.3 Brand awareness in digital buying

Digital channels and environments have grown rapidly, especially from 1996 to 2006, and are here to stay as channels for customer service, overall communication, sales and marketing. Digitalization is not only a phenomenon anymore but a cornerstone of marketing and business nowadays. (Merisavo et al. 2006, 15) Edelman (2010) sees that the internet has dramatically changed how customers engage with different brands. He also stated that the old way of doing marketing and business is unsustainable. He sees that customers nowadays are very promiscuous in their relationships with brands. Customers could search information and connect with multiple brands in digital channels at the same time. (Edelman 2010) Those digital marketing channels could be for example websites, online marketing, email marketing and mobile marketing (Merisavo et al. 2006, 15).

However, the problem is that customers can shop online in ways that are not under the control of companies, manufacturers and retailers. Edelman (2010) also sees that companies do not know how to reach the customers’ digital ‘’touch points’’, where the customer is open to influence when shopping online. The point is that when creating brand awareness in a digital environment, companies should understand customers’ digital buying behavior in order to reach customers in the right ‘’touch points’’. Edelman (2010) states that traditionally marketers have seen customer buying behavior as follows; first customers start with many brands in mind and then ‘’narrow them down to a final choice’’. However, he thinks that nowadays customers are not that reductive in their decision-making process.

Instead, customers add and drop brands from a consideration set during the actual evaluation process.

Also according to Sweezey (2014, 13) a modern buyer starts their buying journey online and ‘’goes back to google’’ more than two times during the decision making process.

According to him, modern buyers do not want to discuss with or meet the seller before the buyer feels ready for it. This basically means that buyers need to have time to surf and search online before they feel comfortable or ready to communicate with the seller.

According to Merisavo et al. (2006, 19) utilization of information technology, CRM -systems as well as digital marketing channels has been tangled during their history. They also believe that the ultimate breakthrough is still coming when marketers really learn to use digital channels to understand and engage customers to the brand or the company.

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According to Haig (2001), email marketing is one way to create brand awareness among potential B2B customers. Email marketing enables companies to share and offer informative content about their products and services. Merisavo et al. (2006, 55) sees that B2B marketing should also be used for personalized marketing. They stated that personalized marketing (like personalized content and layout) could significantly improve the results of marketing. In order to personalize the content, marketers should search and collect customer information and customers’ buying behavior (Merisavo et al. 2006, 55).

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3 MARKETING AUTOMATION

The world of marketing has changed rapidly since digitalization has ultra-connected the world in ways that allow people to operate and communicate worldwide like never seen before. Utilizing marketing automation enables companies to reach people both in a personal and measurable way. (Sweezey 2014) It could be said that marketing automation technology fills a void that existing technologies like CRM systems leave, and marketing automation technology is usually integrated for example with a CRM system.

One of the world’s most popular marketing automation providers Marketo (2015) sees that marketing automation could help B2B marketers solve the challenge of managing a large amount of often complicated relationships with potential customers. They see that marketing automation technology could help manage, measure and steer the multichanneled and personalized communications with potential customers.

Sweezey (2014) simplifies that as a term, marketing automation refers to the process of using one platform for multiple marketing activities. Those activities could be tracking leads, automating personal marketing messages or downloading comprehensive reports and statistics about marketing activities. Ginty et. al (2010) sees that the most important aspects of marketing automation are segmentation, lead scoring and lead nurturing. Another article by Dickie (2012) defines lead scoring, lead nurturing and analytics as driving forces of marketing automation. Even though the definitions could differ, the possibilities and the purpose of marketing automation tools is mostly understood similarly in existing conversation.

However, the aim of traditional marketing automation is to increase marketing effectiveness and marketing revenue. Several contexts that people usually associate with marketing automation are demand generation, customer relationship management or automated lead management. Usually the motivation behind using marketing automation is generating more leads with the same budget, proving the value of marketing efforts, empowering marketing users to build online campaigns, managing the lead funnel more effectively, aligning sales and marketing or consolidating multiple tools like CRM, social media or email marketing.

(Sweezey 2014)

When utilizing marketing automation and personalization in marketing operations, both the contact details and personal data of the customers must be collected and analyzed for

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example from customer relationship management (CRM) systems. According to Wiersema (2013), marketing teams are also able to get deeper insight from the customer data from CRM systems if marketing and sales systems are integrated. According to Järvinen and Taiminen (2015), tracking individual behaviors or actions over time requires that customers actually leave contact information like an email address when visiting a company’s website.

Basically because new customers could not be found using CRM systems, companies also need processes that identify visitors on their websites or social media. According to Järvinen and Taiminen (2015), complete use of marketing automation requires that individual new customers first identify themselves by, for example, sharing their contact information.

Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) divide marketing automation to the active and passive approaches. The active approach refers to asking direct questions whereas the passive approach uses previously gathered information, such as past transactions or clickstream data. When building marketing automation processes, the active approach could involve content that directly asks customers ‘’would you like to learn about this topic?’’ and leads customers straight to the company’s website via a link.

3.1 Overall marketing automation process

According to Sweezey (2014), marketing automation is both a technology and a way of marketing. Putkinen (2014) explains in his Master Thesis that marketing automation actually combines technology and methodology to first understand buyer behavior and use that information for marketing and selling purposes. Putkinen (2014) uses a definition by Ginty et. al (2012): “Marketing automation combines technology and methodology to understand buyer intent, engage leads with personalized messaging and content, trigger the release of messages based on buyer behavior, and pass on the hottest leads to the sales team”. That definition does not include all the possibilities of marketing automation, but more likely reflects how the automated email marketing process actually goes.

Naturally, marketing automation also has a strong symbiotic relationship with online marketing and digitalization. Marketing automation needs digital marketing to work but at the same time, digital marketing could be more effective with using marketing automation.

With marketing automation for example, the following digital marketing actions could be planned more efficiently: search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, content marketing, trade shows, social media and websites.

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(Sweezey 2014) According to Järvinen and Taiminen (2015), marketing automation is a software platform that delivers content based on particular rules set by users.

According to Sweezey (2014), marketing automation includes three different parts. The first part is lead tracking, which basically means tracking a lead across all marketing channels.

The second part is automated execution, which consist of automated processes for automated marketing campaigns for example. The third is just downloading comprehensive reports and statistics about marketing activities. These reports help marketers value and analyze their marketing efforts and revenue. (Sweezey 2014) Marketing automation includes techniques similar to Web analytics. According to Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) marketing automation enables marketers to track and utilize website visitors’ online behaviors such as navigation paths and page views. That information comes from cookies and IP addresses. Since the overall goal of marketing automation is to attract, build and maintain trust with customers, personalization is one of the key elements of building effective marketing automation. Regardless if the customer is current or totally new, automated content should meet that customers specific needs. As such, Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) noticed that according to Petty and Cacioppo (1986), more personal messages will be more effective and more likely noticed. Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) sums up that the ultimate goal is to design content to meet customers’ individual needs and expectations. When talking about B2B customers and marketing automation, personalization refers to the use of digital content marketing.

Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) sees that marketing automation is realized inside of the sales funnel that, in the case of marketing automation, is divided to suspects, prospects, leads and deals. Suspects are potential customers that the company is already aware of.

Prospects could be defined as suspects ‘’who meet the predefined criteria’’. Prospect selection is based on the sales representatives identification of which prospect could be a potential and profitable buyer. Leads are prospects that were identified as potential and high quality prospects and who are qualified to be contacted. The sales funnel ends with deals.

Deals are leads that actually ended up in deals. (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015)

Callah (2010) and Ernst et al. (2010) highlights the sales teams’ role in the marketing process. Marketing and sales operations need to work together in order to take full advantage of marketing automation. They state that the sales team needs to change the way they think and operate for ideal utilization of marketing automation. According to Sweezey (2014) the marketing, CRM, website and sales teams should all work together to

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create a successful marketing automation process. Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) also highlighted that the integration of the marketing and sales systems is essential. They stated that companies should consider using ‘’a joint marketing and sales funnel’’ instead of the regular sales funnel.

3.1.1 Marketing and sales funnel

The ‘’Marketing and sales funnel’’ by Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) includes five stages.

These marketing and selling stages strongly utilize marketing automation software as well as CRM systems. As picture 3 below shows, use of marketing automation software is most significant during stages one and two. As said earlier, this study focuses on early phases of the customer path E.g. creating brand awareness about the company among the company’s B2B customers.

Picture 3. Marketing and sales funnel (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015)

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The first stage of the marketing and sales funnel is identifying and classifying contacts.

These contacts could be potential buyers or visitors to a website who left their contact information during their online visit. If the visitor is a current customer, the marketing automation system should identify the customer through an IP address, cookies, an e-mail address or a website login. However, the first stage requires that the suspect is identified.

After that, identified contacts can be divided into marketing or sales leads. (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015) An interview in the study of Järvinen and Taiminen (2015) defines marketing leads as identified contacts on which the system has ‘’some sort of behavioral data but no clear signals of purchase intention’’. Contrary to this, sales leads are contacts whose ‘’behavior shows clear indications of a purchase intention’’ (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015).

The aim of the second stage of the marketing and sales funnel is to nurture and score marketing leads. Nurturing means that marketing leads are transformed into sales leads through attracting, educating and engaging marketing leads. (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015) Lead nurturing refers to the process of ‘’taking a person from one step to the next automatically’’ (Sweezey 2014). The aim is to offer timely and meaningful content to marketing leads through marketing automation software and lead potential customers into making a buying decision. More specifically, nurturing is an interactive process where

‘’marketing leads are targeted with personalized nurturing campaigns’’ (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015). During nurturing campaigns, marketers get information and learn about the prospects behavior and needs. (Järvinen and Taiminen 2015)

During the second stage, identified contacts who fit the potential customer criteria are nurtured into ‘’warm’’ sales leads. Stage two includes the lead scoring part, which actually defines when a marketing lead is ready to be transferred to the sales team. According to Järvinen and Taiminen (2015), sales and marketing teams together decide the score weights that determine when a marketing lead is transferred to sales ready. Sweezey (2014, 97) stated that marketing and sales teams should together define the following concepts:

sales-ready, score, service-level agreement and sales-ready lead. According to him, it is very important that both teams understand these concepts similarly.

The first two stages of the marketing and sales funnel deal mostly with marketing automation as well as creating brand awareness. After sales leads are transferred to the sales team for contacting, the focus will be on engaging customers to stay as a customer or buy more. According to Järvinen’s and Taiminen (2015), the marketing and sales funnel

Creating brand awareness through automated email nurturing in campaigns in B2B context

TIIVISTELMÄ

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF FIGURES

LIST OF PICTURES

Top of Mind

Brand recall

Brand recognition

Unaware of brand

BRAND